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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Yuqi Liu, Shuai Che, Adam Burak, Daniel L. Barth, Nicolas Zweibaum, Minghui Chen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 907-919
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2103343
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fluoride salt-cooled, High-temperature Reactors (FHRs), featuring particle fuel, graphite moderator, and molten fluoride salt coolant, are used for electricity generation and process heat applications. The primary loop of an FHR is a closed loop that operates slightly above the atmospheric pressure with the fluoride salt temperature over 600°C. Reliable high-temperature molten salt pumps are critical to the successful deployment of FHRs. To stabilize rotating shafts and reduce the associated friction coefficients, well-designed bearings are required for molten salt pumps. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the detailed hydrodynamic performance of bearings under high-temperature molten salt conditions. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics software package, i.e., STAR-CCM+, was used to predict the performance of fluoride salt–lubricated bearings. The numerical models were verified and validated respectively based on an analytical solution derived from the Reynolds equation and experimental data published in the literature. Good agreement was observed between the simulation results and the analytical solution and experimental data with a maximum relative discrepancy of less than 5%. The validated numerical model was then employed to predict the pressure distributions, applied static loads, and power losses of high-temperature fluoride salt–lubricated bearings with various Sommerfeld numbers. In addition, a parametric analysis was performed to investigate the influence of the axial and helical grooves of bearings on applied static load and power loss. It is found that under the same salt lubrication conditions, the bearings with helical grooves and axial grooves respectively yield 20% off and 14% off power loss compared with the bearing without grooves.